


To Be Alone

by charmtion



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, F/M, POV Outsider, Political Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21697654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmtion/pseuds/charmtion
Summary: ‘It is something Daenerys learns in that single moment: what it is to be alone. All her life surrounded on all sides. By flesh and by ghosts. By puppets, too. That is what he is — here,now— a puppet strung-tight by the hand that moves him. Pretty porcelain fingers; strings wrapped tight around them: ink-dark. His hair. Obsidian strands wrenched between those pretty porcelain fingers as he kneels between his sister’s thighs.’A dragon queen stumbles upon a sunlit scene of two wolves all tangled up together...
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 27
Kudos: 226





	To Be Alone

**Author's Note:**

> > This just came to me all of a sudden this evening. Give it a go. It’s Jonsa through-and-through. Trust me. 🐺

It is something she has never learnt: what it is to be alone. All her life surrounded on all sides. By flesh and by ghosts. The quiet, moving shades of mothers, brothers, distant ancestors at her back. The purple-eyed madman left to her by the winds of fate. He was flesh. Blood. Same as her. But all he spoke of were ghosts. Dust. Shadows. Twisted crowns, thrones made of melted iron swords. Destiny. History. A dragon’s right to rule — given by the gods, stolen by a stag. Shadows and dust, all he spoke.

Still, he was her brother. Her flesh. Her blood. Even a crown of molten gold could not change that fact. He steps in-time with her even now. Just another quiet, cold shadow moving at her back. But there are others besides the ghosts. Missandei. Ser Jorah. Tyrion Lannister. The Spider. _Jon_. Mm, Jon most of all. Keeps him at her side constantly. Brushes her fingers on his arm as they walk about the courtyards. Always checking that he is _there_.

In flesh, he may be. But he is far away from her. She can sense it. _See_ it. Ink-dark eyes round and wide on hers; but there are secrets in their shadows. Moving like the wraiths at her back. He is changed since he came home. Something different in the way he holds himself. Eagle-gliding cheekbones above his dark beard. Tension piquing the corners of his eyes — as if it is a mask he wears, not his true face.

Does her best to break those strings. Coquettish little smiles thrown at him in council. A kiss that leaves her breathless, bright-cheeked beneath a waterfall. But he is wooden. An old barred gate indifferent to the battering ram of her lips, her tongue, her taste. Arm around her back; but his eyes are elsewhere. Lines of tension still pulling at their corners. Feels him against her: strung tight as a puppet. She wonders — not for the first time — who it is that is the master of the strings that move him.

*

Finds out come noonday. The castle is quiet. Clang of metalwork in the yard. Murmur of serving girls changing up the rushes. She leaves her chambers, tells Missandei to stay put; glimmer in her eye, teeth nipping at her lip. Dressed in a snow-white gown, fur-trimmed bodice brushing at her throat. Hair flowing down her back: liquid silver in the weak winter sunlight. Perfume at her pulse-points. Her snowy gown, silky hair, sweet scent — surely he will not be so wooden in the face of all of _that_. Surely the strings that move him will be wrapped tight round _her_ fingers now.

She does not call out his name as she treads softly down the galley toward his chambers. Does not say a word. Only looks over her shoulder as she eases up the bolt of the ironwood door. Feels a girl again: scent of lemons in the air, giggling as she disappeared in a swirl of skirts behind a red door. Steadies herself now. No giggling; nary a sound as she lifts the latch, slips inside the fire-warmed chamber.

Quiet. Everything perfectly still. Papers on a desk carved of dark-stained oak. Chair pushed half-back behind it. Candles flickering in their sconces. Fire burning merrily in the hearth, chasing shadow-shapes across the walls. She slides the door shut behind her; leans back on it a moment as she slows her breathing, the loud heartbeat sounding in her ears. Listens. Crackle of wood burnt up by flames. Creak of window-glass as the wind whips up outside. Her heartbeat. Her breathing — and that of another.

_Jon_.

It hangs on her lips. Makes her breathless. But she does not say it. Something in her tells her she _must not_ say it. Steps quietly instead, slippered feet hardly denting the thick bearskins strewn across the flagstones. Archway looming. Double-doors of bracketed ironwood. A slim crack where the two sides meet. Quietly, she puts her eye to it. 

*

It is something she learns in that single moment: what it is to be alone. All her life surrounded on all sides. By flesh and by ghosts. By puppets, too. That is what he is — here, _now_ — a puppet strung-tight by the hand that moves him. Pretty porcelain fingers; strings wrapped tight around them: ink-dark. His hair. Obsidian strands wrenched between those pretty porcelain fingers as he kneels between his sister’s thighs. 

Weak winter sunlight at the windows. Dapples of it moving across the bed. Hundred shades of ice and fire resting on the storm-tossed sheets. Ivory skin. Scarlet hair. Sapphire eyes half-closed in a moan. _Lady of Winterfell_. Flame of annoyance that she looks exactly _that_, even now, even _here_ spilt haphazard across the bed: tangled limbs, arms out-flung, fire-streak strands of hair blazing up the pillows. Blood beating beneath pale cheeks; moon-pale breasts ragged with quickened breath.

Sweat prickling beneath the sleeves of her snow-white gown now. Hair sticking to her nape: liquid silver flowing molten as her belly. Perfume at her pulse-points — but it doesn’t smell so sweet now. Sickly. Bile on her tongue. Anger in the amethyst of her eyes. Something else behind the anger. Dagger to her heart how he looks — here, _now_ — a world away from that wooden king in her arms beneath a waterfall. 

He is candlewax here. Alive as rain in the moonlight. Every bit of him aglow. Muscles flexing beneath the scar-flecked skin of his back. Ink-dark hair half-caught in a tie at his nape. Pretty porcelain fingers tangled in the rest of it. Moving his head this way and that. Low, feral hum rumbling in his throat. A sound she’s never heard him make before. Even back on the ship in that low, dim-lit bunk. Looks at him now. Realises he is a different beast. A different man. One she never really knew.

*

How long she stands there, she cannot know. It surprises her. That she is frozen; fingers resting lightly on the ironwood frame. Surprises her that she is ice to all their fire. Dainty slippered feet rooted to the flagstones. Heart a bit of frost-tinged stone rattling between her ribs. Usually so quick to anger. Fire. Fury. Flames leaping high in her gut. _Dracarys_. Lingers on her tongue. But she is not a dragon — not now, not _here_. Like some web of age-old magic settles on this place, this chamber, this bed, these _wolves_. Cuts the fire from her heart. Cuts the power from the tongue that would command it. 

Looks back to him now. She cannot help it. Braced on his forearms. Moving slick and sweat-damp over his fire-haired sister. Brows pressed tight together. Scars bright as rubies on his skin as sunlight bathes them both in pale pools. Thinks of the feel of those scars. Some rough, some smooth. Sun-warmed streaks of flesh beneath her fingertips. His face a mask above hers as she touched those scars in that low, dim-lit bunk.

He turns his face to the side suddenly. Eyes shut tight as his sister moans her pretty little sounds. Ink-dark curls falling over his brow. Tension piquing the corners of his eyes — but it is no mask he wears now. No. It is his true face: cheeks rogued by the same love that shapes the word trembling on his tongue. 

“_Sansa_.”

Caresses it as she would her command for dragonfire, destruction, _death_. Like a prayer, the way he intones it. Drifts of smoke on the air till even she can taste it. Rich, dark — sweet as wine, twice as potent. Hazy-headed, she braces a hand against the door. Makes to push back from it, turn tail and run. But she cannot. She is frozen. _Dracarys_. On her tongue; but even that cannot set her free from the ice of this place, its latent power, its lowing wolves. Feels it ever stronger in this moment: what it is to be alone. 

*

All through dinner she wonders at why she did not _do_ anything. Wrench the doors back, leave the iron-hinges groaning. Summon all the fury of the fire that rages within her. Turn it all to ash: this place, that chamber, that bed, those _wolves_. Fly amongst the clouds and revel in its ruin: a streak of soot-stained snow where once a grey-stoned castle stood. Pick amongst the charred bones till she found the knots of both of them. Cast them in the torrents of that waterfall till they were swept to dust. Just another pair of shades to join the cold, quiet company at her back. _Wonders_ at it — anything to avoid recognising that she already knows the answer. 

Jon at her side as the serving girls pour wine, carry plates, spoon out broth. At her side, yes. In flesh, he may be. But he is far away from her. The mask is back. Settled smoothly into place; secrets brushed to the very edges of his smoke-dark eyes. But she _knows_ them. Knows their heat, their sound, their shape, their _shade_ — red-warm as the streak of hair between his sister’s thighs. Turns her head now, quiet fury as her eyes settle on the Lady of Winterfell. 

Pretty porcelain fingers dandling a goblet. Wine-drop dangling on the rim as she lifts it to her lips. Charcoal skirts. Leather bodice. Silver chain heavy as any strung about a maester’s neck. Scarlet hair running down her back: liquid fire in the soft glowing candlelight. Something in those sapphire eyes as they turn to meet with ones hard-carved of amethyst: wolf and dragon circling in a dance as deadly as any sword-song battle.

Wonder fades from her in the same moment the answer flares white-hot behind her eyes. _Fear_. That is what she felt as she stood there alone at the door. Mother of Dragons — and yet she fears a fire-haired woman. Fears her. _All_ of her. Polished words sliding smooth as knives into skin; placid eyes blue-wide as a lake — with not a current stirring in them. Pretty porcelain fingers, the way they play the strings wrapped tight around them. Her very name. The way _he_ makes it sound when it’s trembling on his tongue. 

The Lady of Winterfell looks at her now, something like pity behind that blue-wide gaze. She follows the sweep of sapphire as it settles over her shoulder. Turns to find Jon staring back. Tension piquing the corners of his eyes — as for a moment the mask slips. She sees the secret in the shadows of his stare. Knows its heat, its sound, its shape, its _shade_ — red-warm as the fire-haired woman staring back at him. 

It is something she learns in that moment: what it is to be alone. A queen surrounded on all sides. A puppet sat beside her. A group of cold, moving shades at her back. But she is alone. Make no mistake, she is _alone_ — a dragon in a court of wolves. Afraid, too. Fire in her blood; all the fury of wingbeat and chaos at her fingertips. But she is afraid: of him, the man — the _beast_ — she never really knew; of _her_ — the fire-haired woman he lets behind his mask. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> So _yes_, I just really like the idea that Sansa is probably one of the first (if not _the_ first) fellow women that Daenerys has a bit of healthy fear for. That inkling sort of spiralled into this idea and I just couldn’t get it out of my head till I wrote it down. I don’t watch the show and as we all know they haven’t even got _near_ each other in the books yet — so indulge my bit of artistic licensing here, thank you please. Let me know what you think! 
> 
> **N.B.** title inspired by Ben Howard’s [gorgeous song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW1E1ig19cs). ✨❤️


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